How to give back your drugs, in Denver or across the nation

The Drug Enforcement Agency and local police are beginning to detail some of the dropoff sites for prescription drug “Takeback” day April 28th.

As we wrote in a recent piece on prescription painkiller abuse[1], too many families have leftover prescriptions hanging around the house. That half-empty bottle of pills remaining from your toothache or your ACL surgery are a prime, tempting target for “borrowers” in your own family, among your friends or kids’ friends, and among burglars.

Health officials don’t want you just flushing them down the sink or toilet. Prescription drugs can be bad for the water supply and for downstream wildlife if they don’t get filtered out of the system. Better to drop them at an official takeback location. Meanwhile, the DEA is working to finalize an upcoming rule that will allow pharmacies to take back unused drugs any day of the week, something not allowed at the moment.